Galette des rois is very easy to do if you buy 'ready to cook' puff pastry (a hell to do by yourself)
So, on a round layer of puff pastry, you put a large portion of frangipane or almond cream :
Ingredients:
1/2 cup ground almond meal
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
3 tablespoons butter, softened
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
Preparation:
Using a food processor, combine all the ingredients until a smooth, creamy paste is formed.
Then after, you put this frangipane on the first layer of puff pastry, you hide in it a 'fève (literally 'broad bean' because at the origin it was only a bean for poor people) : now it is a small figurine in porcelain or terracotta or plastic.
Then you covered it with the second puff pastry and with your thumb you press the edge for closing it. At the end you break an egg and paint the surface of the galette with the yellow part only) for it takes a golden color in the oven.
between 25- 30mn in the oven (moderate heat).
Traditionally,in families, when people eat the galette, the youngest goes under the table while someone cut the cake in equal parts. Then showing the pieces of cake one by one, people ask : 'For whom ?' And the young under the table, blindly, name one after one all the guest. Then he comes back at the surface and takes the last part.
( miniature tirée des Heures dites d'Adélaïde de Savoie
ms. Chantilly Musée Condé 76)
So everybody eat a part and the one who got the fève is the king/queen. We put a golden paper crown on his/her head and he/she has to choice a queen or a king, but putting the fève in his/her glass of champagne or cider.
In France we do it since the first day of Epiphany and then all the month of January.
It is an official celebration for in Elysées (Presidency House), they eat also a galette des rois, but the funny thing is that we are strongly republican, so the King Cake eaten by the President has no 'fève' and no crown, because there must not be a King at Elysées
So if other people have something to share about their own way to celebrate Epiphany or King's Day, or recipes of King Cake, post it !
Another interesting thing is that this celebration involves Medes (the mythic ancestors of Kurds). Epiphany commemorates the day when 3 magi (one of the six tribes of Medes and astronomers and wizard) saw a special star in heaven and knew that a king was born. Then they came from Media to Palestine and brought gifts to a unknown baby called Jesus
. After many centuries, Christian people called them 'kings' but the real text mentioned the 'Mages' who were a special cast of astronomers and astrology seekers among Medes. So it should be called Magi or Medes Cake…
